University of New England

UNE co-hosts 21st Annual Conference of the Society for Literature, Science and the Arts Nov. 1- 4

The University of New England Department of English is one of three local hosts sponsoring the 21st Annual Conference of the Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts in Portland, Maine, Nov. 1-4, 2007.

The Society for Literature, Science, and the Arts fosters the multi-disciplinary study of the relations among literature and language, the arts, science, medicine, and technology.

The topic for this year's conference is "code." As conference organizers explain:

"Biological and algorithmic, protector of secrets and porthole to mysteries, universal and singular, code is an invitation to thought. Code can be “wet” (genetic, organic, human), 'dry' (digital, mathematical, logical), something in-between, neither, or both (linguistic, symbolic, religious, moral, legal). Code is the meeting ground of strange bedfellows, the cipherer and decipherer, the domain of law and its subversion, communication and privacy. Code is about patterns, sequences, systems, translations, substitutions. It can bind, trick, and free. Modern technologies are affording us more and more keys to unlock nature’s code and more opportunities to manipulate it."

The conference, which is also being hosted by Bowdoin College and Dartmouth College, is expected to draw more than 200 scholars and artists from across the United States, Europe, and Australia. Most events will be held at the Holiday Inn by the Bay in Portland.

This year's plenary speakers are N. Katherine Hayles, Hillis Professor of Literature in English and Media Arts at the University of California, Los Angeles, and Brian Massumi, professor of communication at Université de Montréal.

The plenary lectures and the receptions that precede them from 5- 6 p.m. are free and open to the public.

N. Katherine Hayles
Hayles' lecture, "Intermediation: A Theoretical Framework for Code and Electronic Literature," is scheduled for 6 p.m. Nov. 2, at the Holiday Inn by the Bay.

Hayles is a groundbreaking theorist whose work focuses on the intersections of literature, science, and the arts. She has been particularly influential in illuminating the parallels of scientific models and literary theories, as well as in contextualizing the interactions between humans and intelligent machines.

Her books include How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics (U of Chicago Press 1999), Chaos and Order: Complex Dynamics in Literature and Science (U of Chicago Press 1991), and most recently, My Mother Was a Computer: Digital Subjects and Literary Texts (U of Chicago Press 2005). She is the Hillis Professor of Literature in English and Media Arts at the University of California, Los Angeles.

Brian Massumi
Massumi's lecture, "The Ideal Streak: Why Visual Representation Always Fails," is scheduled for 6:15 p.m. at the Portland Museum of Art.

Massumi established his preeminence by introducing the English-speaking world to Deleuze and Guattari through his translation of their seminal work, A Thousand Plateaus (U of Minnesota Press 1987).

He followed this masterful and challenging translation with an original text that practices and advances the work of Deleuze and Guattari, A User's Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia: Deviations from Deleuze and Guattari (MIT Press 1992). His most recent book, Parables for the Virtual: Movement, Affect, Sensation (Duke U Press 2002), finds Massumi again at a critical nexus of interdisciplinary research, articulating lucid and novel theories of embodiment and perception to catalyze the recent interest in corporeality and its relations to experience. He is Professor of Communication at Université de Montréal.

Other Sessions
There are also more than 80 panels of participants who will discuss a range of topics, such as "Coding the Brain as Cultural Organ through Art, Diagram and Memoir," "Just the Same Old Song: Technology, Communication and Gender," "Recoding the Posthuman: Genetics, Language and Animal Rights," and "Art and DNA."

Registration/Information
UNE faculty and staff are warmly invited to attend a day of the conference with a special Day Pass Rate of $35. Registration will be available there on the days of the conference.

For more information visit the conference website at http://www.slsa07.com or contact Susan McHugh, Ph.D., assistant professor of English, at smchugh@une.edu. or 207-602-2615.

(Press release posted Oct. 29, 2007)